Animal Companion and Familiar Progression or "Pets"

[Plot Lost]

As far as I understand things, the only thing that improves Familiar and and Animal Companion levels are the levels in the classes that gave the ability to summon these "Pets" in the first place. Hence, Wizard/Sorcerer for the Familiar, and Druid/Ranger for the Animal Companion.

I have a character with some levels of the Wizard class, and originally I paid no heed towards the Summon Familiar ability, but after few level ups I remembered how these Familiars and Animal Companions could be quite potent indeed. And I instantly started to think how it might be fun to role-play a somewhat reluctant master of a Black Panther. For example, only summon it near the edges of forests, and attempt to flee from it and look absolutely miserable when it gives a bear hug or attempts nudge against one's character like a regular house cat would. I would have my character just look at it with these eyes filled with terror, as it playfully just sits there in front of him, waving its tail from side to side. And then I recalled how many years ago I had already tried something like it in both NWN and NWN2, with a Ranger/Assassin character, and how at some point there was just no point to summon it as no amount of buffs could keep it alive against the level appropriate foes. In essence, the animal companion had turned into a thing inside a "Pokeball": something only to be taken out and put back in when needed for role-play. In other words, the Familiar or the Animal Companion became something that was not really with you on your great adventures, and even if you saw the effort to try and keep it alive, it did not progress with you. Therefore, even though I could have made use of the familiar on my Wizard class on this server, I have not, because that way I do not have to come up with an excuse why it is suddenly no longer on my character's side. I know its death could be an easy in character explanation for its absence, but I would much rather not summon it in the first place only to kill it off when it is no longer mechanically convenient.

Therefore, I thought that wouldn't it be nice if these Animal Companions and Familiars actually kept up with your adventures regardless of your character build, or level order. For example, if the summoned Animal Companion or Familiar used the character's Hit Dice or Caster Level to determine it's level instead of that level of Druid/Ranger or Wizard/Sorcerer. If it was based on character's Hit Dice, you could in theory have a "Scantily Clad" Female Barbarian 28/Druid 1/Wizard 1, with two level appropriate Black Panthers at her feet and fighting alongside her. And if it was based on character's Caster Level, you could still have a Druid/Wizard or Sorcerer/Mystic Theurge with the aforementioned two Black Panthers as but one example of it. Or that of a Wizard/Eldritch Knight/Archmage, with appropriately levelled Raven, Pseudodragon, or Faerie Dragon. Or what about a Ranger/Wizard/Arcane Archer with two Black Panthers as well to keep enemies at bay while she takes aim? I keep bringing up the two Black Panthers because of the potential of flanking Sneak Attacks.

But then the problem is the implementation of it all. When NWN first came out, I think it was possible to have a Druid/Ranger/Wizard and have three animal companions at the level of your Druid. Hence, you could be bit of a Beast Master. But when that bug was fixed, it is my understanding that Druid/Ranger levels no longer stack with one and other to determine the level of the Animal Companion, while Wizard/Sorcerer levels might still stack in order to determine the level of the Familiar. And when it comes to the Animal Companion, if you grant the feat from an item, only a low level Ranger could ever make use of it. Some things are hard coded and cannot be altered. So it kind of looks a bit hopeless to me of getting my suggested change in...

But, but, I wonder if there is a work around of some kind, as each level of an Animal Companion or a Familiar is ultimately a template of its on. Which is probably also why I do recall bugs such as a high level Raven being unable to attack, etc. But anyhow, back to the matter at hand. What if you leave the feats themselves be as they are, to progress as they progress, but instead add a custom script of some kind that checks for the level of the summoned Animal Companion/Familiar and compares it to the level of its master, and then potentially unsummons the Animal Companion/Familiar and replaces it with an Animal Companion/Familiar of the same type but more appropriate level.

The process would be something like this:
1) Player Summons the Animal Companion/Familiar
2) Player types a macro command such as "/PetLevelCheck"
3) If player Wizard/Sorcerer/Druid/Ranger level is < Player HD, then: unsummon current Animal Companion/Familiar, and summon Animal Companion/Familiar of appropriate level to replace it
4) Rest of game play is as before

Now, if the server has someone who can make the above happen, it unfortunately doesn't remove the potential balance concerns. After all, the Animal Companion/Familiar is additional target for the enemies encountered on the server, an additional source of damage and other actions, and hence a direct boost of player power at basically no cost whatsoever aside from the spell slots used to buff it up. This is why I would point towards a NWN2 feat called "Natural Bond" which allowed a multi-classed Druid's or Ranger's level count as up to three levels higher in order to determine the level of the Animal Companion, a feat that in essence worked just like "Practiced Spellcaster" feat here on this server. With that feat in mind, and if we use a character's total Hit Dice to determine the level of their Pet... You could say that with that "Natural Bond" feat half of a character's Non-Druid/Ranger or Non-Wizard/Sorcerer levels would be used to determine the level of their respective pet. Therefore, a Wizard 10/Fighter 10 character, could summon a level 15 (or 16) Familiar, when at the moment such a character could only summon a level 11 Familiar. And then you could have "Epic Natural Bond" feat that allows those Non-Druid/Ranger or Non-Wizard/Sorcerer count as one to one to determine the level of the Pet. Thus, a Wizard 10/Fighter 20 character, could summon a level 30 (or 31) Familiar.

I think system like that could be easily adjusted for balance purposes.

For example, you could say that without any of these "Natural Bond" feats, the aforementioned Non-levels, only count as 1/3, and with the first feat it is 2/3, and with the epic feat it becomes 3/3. And if you wish to maintain the advantage of a single class Druids/Rangers/Wizards/Sorcerers, you could then potentially subtract X amount of levels from the summoned Animal Companion or Familiar from the multi classed characters. Such as, -1, -2, or -3, or -5.  

And for me the primary change and purpose of this change would be to allow for one's Animal Companions and Familiars to keep adventuring with the player character. But I do understand if it cannot be made happen on the server, or if double Sneak Attacking Black Panthers would be bit too much.

[SpacePope]

I don't see that happening, sadly. 

Even if full CL progression was used to determine the level of an animal companion/familiar, you'll quickly find that they're all near unusable past the very early levels due to CD's power level scaling quite high and them... not scaling as much. Their low AC makes them die extremely fast, even if they benefited from full CL scaling. Most of the summons from summon spells have been improved compared to baseline NWN, but modifying the familiars/animal companions requires editing each level of the creature files, multiplied by all the companion/familiars there are, which just ends up being a huge amount of work for little benefit, considering the staff has usually favoured people grouping up with allies and not raising their own army, plus summons/companions being annoying to deal with in events due to the janky AI and lag impact. 

They're to be treated more as an RP addition to your character and not a mechanical tool to use in combat, as much as some of us would like it to be different.

[Plot Lost]

Now that you mention it, there are noticeable differences between the NWN1 and NWN2 Animal Companion ACs. But with that in mind, I did stumble on this mod on NWNVault, "Animal Companion/Familiar Rebalance", which does grant the animal companions additional AC, which would seem to add up to +12 at 30 Druid/Ranger/Wizard/Sorcerer levels. There are other changes too, such as additional elemental damage when appropriate, regeneration and damage reductions.

I do not know how easy it would be to apply a non-EE NWN1 mod to EE NWN1, but maybe that could in theory at least somewhat lessen the burdens of it all.

The Pixie skills have been changed too, which basically means that it no longer gets Spot and Listen, but it gets Taunt instead. But considering the server changes, I guess those at least would have to re-adjusted.

Oh well.    

[onivel]

Yeah... considering we just lost one of our big scripters and the shear amount of work this would require... I dont see this happening. For the most part after the low levels familiars and animal companions are more for flavor than anything else. Every single familiar and animal companion for every level would need altered and updated... it is an extreme amount of work. This has been brought up and talked about a number of times before. AS nice as it would be, it is just not in the cards with many other pieces having priority.